J. C. Watts Quotes

My father grew up with no money. He was raised in one of the poorest neighbourhoods in the U.S. My mother helped him sew labels into his ties. My life has been very comfortable, sure, but they instilled into us the importance of the work ethic.

My parents always encouraged us to get an education and establish a profession. However, my brothers and I grew up with considerable freedom, whether it was saving or spending our tips from the restaurant or our career choices.

We weren't dirt poor, but there was no spare money kicking around. While it was very much understood that the way to a better life was through education, books were a luxury we couldn't afford. But when I was six, we actually moved opposite the central library, and that became my home from home.

Ignorant people are apt to overrate the value of what is called education. The sons of the poor, having suffered the privations of poverty, think of wealth as the mother of joy.

As income inequality increases, social mobility falls.

The great mass of our poor white population begin to understand that they have rights, and that they, too, are entitled to some of the sympathy which falls upon the suffering. They are fast learning that there is an almost infinite world of industry opening before them, by which they can elevate themselves and their families from wretchedness and ignorance to competence and intelligence..

We all understand that freedom isn't free. What Romney and Ryan don't understand is that neither is opportunity. We have to invest in it.

I didn't grow up with a lot of money, but I grew up with a lot of opportunities that many people don't have.

The childhood poverty of both my parents and their minimal education did much to influence me and my two younger brothers in our education and career choices. One brother became a dentist and the other, a professor of anthropology with a Ph.D. degree.

I did not come from an academic background. My father was a smart man, but he had a fifth-grade education. He and all his friends were plumbers. They were all born around 1905 in great poverty in New York City and had to go to work when they were 12 or 13 years old.

My father was a factory worker, and we were really poor. But everything I earned peddling papers and working in stores, he made me put aside for education.

Outside of the family, education is the greatest determinant of social mobility.

As a young man, I saw families prosper without reading because there were always sufficient opportunities for willing workers who could follow simple instructions. This is no longer the case. Children who don't read are, in the main, destined for lesser lives. I feel a deep sense of responsibility to change this.

In my experience, poor people are the world's greatest entrepreneurs. Every day, they must innovate in order to survive. They remain poor because they do not have the opportunities to turn their creativity into sustainable income.

Think about it: Every educated person is not rich, but almost every education person has a job and a way out of poverty. So education is a fundamental solution to poverty.

I suppose I don't have to work, but I do love working. I class myself as a working-class girl, and I've never stopped working. When I'm offered shows here, there and the other, I do an awful lot because I feel other people would love to be offered what I'm offered; who am I to say no? I'm definitely working class, and I always will be.

My parents made us do everything, try everything.

The great responsibility that we have today is to put the poor and the near poor back on front of the American agenda.

I was lucky to come from a difficult area. It teaches you not just about football but also life. There were lots of kids from different races and poor families. People had to struggle to get through the day.

America is a place where you can be born into a low-income household but still lift yourself up, and it doesn't matter what color you are.

People who own property feel a sense of ownership in their future and their society. They study, save, work, strive and vote. And people trapped in a culture of tenancy do not.

Economic growth is the key. Economic growth is the key to everything. But once you have economic growth, it is important that we reach out to people who live in the shadows, the people who don't seem to ever think that they get a fair deal.

We cannot afford to leave the poor behind.

I grew up without a lot of money and my parents grew up with far less money. And that's kept me in line. Really in line.

I want to wage war against illiteracy, poverty, unemployment, unfair competition, communitarianism, delinquency.